Latest ipad blogs

I'm utterly grateful to to QUE for sending me a copy of the new book My iPad 2. It's amazingly comprehensive and an essential guide if you want to get the most from your iPad. The book is amply and colorfully illustrated with hundreds of annotated screenshots that accompany step-by-step instructions. The book covers not just the built-in apps, but also the various apps from Apple (iBooks, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), as well as dozens of must-have apps such as GoodReader, Flipboard, Dragon Dictation, Skype, and more. There's also a chapter on the top apps for games and entertainment.

There are a lot of apps that claim to do speech recognition. In reality, what those apps typically do is record your speech and upload that recording to a server that does all the heavy lifting. Examples include the very popular Dragon Dictation, Vlingo and most importantly, Siri, which was actually acquired by Apple. This method can be effective when you have a fast network connection but the Holy Grail of speech recognition needs to be performed in-app.

A couple very good articles have recently been published that give a thorough overview of transferring and syncing files between a desktop computer and an iPad. For example, you can create a Word doc on your desktop computer, save it to Dropbox, and then open it on your iPad and edit it via an office app such as Office2 or Documents to Go. The revised version then syncs automatically back to your desktop computer via Dropbox.

Today's guest blogger is Blaine Moyer. Blaine recently won an iPad 2 case in our iPad engraving contest. After a certain unnamed company (*cough* Incipio *cough*) failed to send his prize, we sent Blaine the Bear Motion Leather iPad 2 Case. Blaine has been keeping his new iPad in a cardboard box while waiting for his new case to arrive. When the case finally arrived, he was nice enough to send us pictures of the unboxing. Congratulations Blaine on your new case.

Catalog Spree (free) brings you over a dozen catalogs, with more to come. The app offers a very attractive and functional presentation of catalogs ranging from Nordstrom Lingerie to Filson (men's outdoor clothing) to DwellStudio (bedroom domestics). You can order from within the app, which has a shopping cart and everything.

TouchGen, a website devoted to gaming on iOS devices, has recently created a free magazine on the same topic. TouchGen Magazine is a "pilot issue" that collects 15 of their reviews over the past two years. Their forthcoming Issue 1 will have many of the features you'd expect from a newsstand gaming magazine, such as news, reviews, features, and commentary, but in an interactive format designed to make the most of the iPad reading experience. Their intention is for the magazine to continue to be free. If you're a gamer, you may want to check it out.

If you use your Apple Wireless keyboard with your device, this accessory may be of interest to you. The Incase Origami Workstation is a combination case and stand. This case was “Inspired by the Japanese art of paper-folding” and “provides complete protection for your Apple Wireless Keyboard.”

The case itself is pretty light and does not really add any bulk. The material reminds of me of the Official Apple iPad (1) Case, but not as soft. It also gets dirty but cleans off pretty easy.

One of my main uses of my iPad is reading the news, and I love The Daily, the newspaper from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp that's just $0.99 per week. I'd actually prefer to read all of my magazines via the iPad.

What's bigger than an iPhone, smaller than a MacBook, and the most anticipated Apple product since the original iPhone? On January 27, at a special invitation only event at the San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Steve Jobs announced Apple's new "magical, revolutionary product" -- the iPad. Meant to fill the gap between the laptop and phone, Jobs said it was "way better" than either. Let's take a look at it.

Thin, lightweight, and powerful

The iPad shares many hardware features with the iPhone, including an accelerometer, an orientation sensor to switch from portrait to landscape mode, solid-state memory, and the same 30-pin doc connector. Connectivity is also virtually the same, with wireless 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR included on all models.

iPad runs iPhone apps!

The iPad will run a version of iPhone OS, and the new device can run virtually any app developed for the iPhone or iPod touch. Aps developed for the iPhone can run on the iPad in native resolution but is large enough to touch type on.

The larger screen not only makes familiar iPhone apps like Calendar, Mail, and Safari look stunning, it also provides screen real estate for more complex elements in the UI. For example, Calendar display a split-sreen view that describes the day's appointments on the left and shows you a color map of used time slots on the right. The split-screen view in Contacts displays you contacts list on the left and the full information for the contact you've selected on the right.

An ebook reader and more

Although not build into the iPad, Apple will offer a free app called iBooks, which will allow you to download and read books from it's new virtual bookstore. The new iBooks store will be accessed from and as easy to use as iTunes.

The ultimate media device?

The iPad is not the world's first tablet PC or the first eBook reader. Toshiba, Lenovo, Acer, and others sell Windows-based tablets, and Amazon has had considerable success with it's Kindle. But Apple thinks the iPad will reinvent the category by offering a vastly superior multi-touch interface an easy access to a wide-variety of apps and media via iTunes. Aple hopes to make the iPad the ultimate media device by leveraging it's existing assets which include over 100 million paying iTunes customers, established relationships with music and video content providers, and over 100,000 iPhone OS app developers.